


before it's too late, i'll take a step away

by tahanan



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chapter 699 (Naruto), Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 13:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18895213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahanan/pseuds/tahanan
Summary: Naruto locks his gaze onto Sasuke’s, the world hardly brushing at the side as everything pulls away, leaving them. Not behind, but suspended; time to take things in, to process and fumble and grow. He understands what Sasuke meant, only prior to what they’ve lost and gain through the years; losing meant to render from fighting against this, this bond. This relationship. This actuality.or, alternatively; Naruto has two fears - one, he won't move forward if he leaves, and two, he won't be able to live with himself if doesn't.





	before it's too late, i'll take a step away

Naruto is thirteen when his fingernails were wadded with dirt and the boy that made him feel so much left so little behind.

Dirt was a second skin, or in Konoha’s pulsating glares brighter than the white sun, it was much less of a second skin and more of who he was. Maybe he was wrong about a lot of things, but he’s so used to justifying them that his rights outbalance what he thinks are wrong. Like instant ramen being healthy, now taking a toll on Gama-chan and his empty stomach. 

Maybe he was wrong about a lot of things. He was wrong about dirt; it grazes his eyes and forces him to look away in training, sometimes. He is pushed onto it, always pulled into it. But he knows he isn’t wrong about Sasuke; how could he, even if he was wronged by him at the Valley (Sasuke was wronged by life, so he doesn’t consider that) of the End. In reality, although he hadn’t fallen to Infinite Tsukoyomi, it happens like this:

Naruto is seventeen when he brings Sasuke back, bloodied and bruised with grins and gashes that can last a year, if Kurama wasn’t so insistent on metabolizing so quick. He’s almost eighteen when the world decides he can start another story or continue this one; the one where Sasuke is leaving and he doesn’t know what to feel when he’s actually talking to him, thanking him and looking him in the eye. The words clambered and jostled in his throat and it just feels squeezed, like he was back at the Academy grounds, reaching out for him. And he’s in reach now, all Naruto has to do is— 

Sasuke smiles, the little one where his black eyes dance and the light bends on his hair and Naruto feels so coiled he might not have been breathing. A small voice leers saying, _go with him,_ but another saying _Konoha needs you_ , and another contradicting _why does Konoha need a war tool in a time where war is rendered useless_. His lips split apart as he hands out the crossed hitai-ate; there were no rusts that moulded and the slash was nearly fresh. Maybe it’s just Jiraiya’s pretentious poetic voice in his head but the headband was almost like his own heart; when Sasuke takes it, he feels capsized and unsteady.

The grass brushed against his toes and sang a low tune of the wind; the forest was thrumming as they’re hidden beneath a sun-filtered canopy. He forgets that Sasuke said this was a recuperation journey. He needs to be alone. He needs to breathe, away from the place that killed his family and eventually, him. He needs to find himself, atone and absolve from his past and wrongdoings and—

From him. He needs everything but him.

Naruto can’t help but feel lonesome at that thought.

“I’m going now.” Sasuke’s voice wades through his muddled thoughts. Naruto looks at him, at his calm face, unlike the tight stoic mask that had melded with him since Itachi revisted him like a ghost of retribution (Itachi never left, he thinks). He’s going he’s going he’s going, like a spitfire mantra the blond almost falters. He looks at him again: attired in black, no Uchiha crest engraved onto his back (he carried the burden of the name far too long), Rinnegan staring back at him. The world stills, and for once, Naruto feels grounded.

“I’m going.” Sasuke repeats.

“Wait, wait,” The rustle in the branches sounded interesting. Naruto’s lips felt like mush. “Uh, what if—”

 Sasuke’s brow arches and Naruto can’t fucking believe that interrupts him. Spit it out spit it out. “—I go with you?”

Naruto decides this is it, he’ll take back his speech of appreciation and push back his hitai-ate on his hand. He can’t give him space, and he doesn’t even need him, but Naruto needs him and he’s already leaving and maybe he can’t take the thought of Sasuke’s own peace—no. He needs this. They both need this, he thinks. 

“Why are you asking me if you could?”

“Because I’m askin’ when you can’t.”

Sasuke stares at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Naruto is going to choke him and then himself. “even after losing an arm to each other, you still can’t ask me if I’d want to go with ya.” 

“It isn’t an eye for an eye situation, Naruto. It’s an uncarved path—to reconcile with who I am, and you—Konoha . . .”

Then it was quiet. Naruto could even hear the damn cricket’s chakra, and they had none. He wondered if he needed senjutsu just to feel what Sasuke’s thinking, because he stood still like a statue, as if he were considering the thought. Maybe he was done running too.

So why was he still keeping to himself, when they’re just meters apart?

Naruto digs his foot deeper into the ground, deeper than what he felt standing without an answer. It was kind of unbearable, despite how they can tear each other down with truth most of the time. Naruto urges himself to leave it be, before his mouth starts retracting, “No, just, nevermind—” 

“Would you go?” Naruto perks up in surprise. Sasuke directly responding is a foreign concept to grasp; after all, perhaps this is one incident where the time wedged between them takes its toll. “If I were thinking that, would you do it? Would you go with me?” 

Naruto was tempted to take it back; to stomp his own foot, to toot his own horn like a clown and turn back. But he doesn’t. Shouldn’t.

“I dunno, like, isn’t this suppose to be a healing trip? I was jus’—I know you need time alone, and especially how we’re kinda. At the opposite ends with Konoha. Our arms are kinda a testament to that and everything but, um, if it’s a healing trip,” Naruto breathes in. “why can’t we heal with each other? Like, y’know.”

Sasuke looks at a tree. “If I wanted to _heal_ my communication skills, I could be with Taka. Why you, Naruto?”

Naruto bares his teeth, as the sun sitting on transient clouds and shadows twist on his white cloak. “I get you’re more comfortable with Taka, but I meant--I meant us. I may have brought you back but it’s like . . . I know we’re never going back to how we were and no I’m not dwelling on it. But I want to. I know your heart like mine but just, like you said.” _Us. Just us._

He felt red. He felt red, swelling like a wound or a gourd of embarrassment. He was red and making a futile effort, but he remembers any effort with Sasuke wasn’t futile and now he doesn’t even know what to fucking think. God if he wanted a vacation, he could’ve gone to Suna on Hokage commercial and militia relations instead of pestering Sasuke’s ensoulment trip. He has Sakura, and Ino, because they’ve been reconnecting but it’s still as if he thought. He thinks this is right and it feels right.

Sasuke was as still as the tree bark next to him. He wants him to respond, anything, because his thought that finally he’s unlocked that mask. But there’s a subtle one that lingers on Sasuke’s face and Naruto is reminded of Gaara, then reminded of his punch that gnashed through in a failed but won Chuunin exam.

(was this a test, Naruto bitterly entertains the thought, that I’m worthy of that reincarnation shit? Wasn’t the war enough?) 

He hates the silence. It’s been a cage and a home to him in solitude. It was probably a home to the Uchiha, when the white noise of the massacre drowns his own writhing tenors out shoved him out of his clan district.

The ground beneath him snakes its merry way on his toes and wades into it. It unravels into an expanse of penumbra until the light and dark that meets at Sasuke’s body and it overwhelms Naruto; he feels like with an inch of a nod, Sasuke can rip world’s skin raw and vulnerable. He can, with his eyes. But Naruto wanted to see it for himself without his world being dug out with a gaze longer than five seconds.

It’s been months at most and Naruto almost forgets how to function since their fight. A few months when he almost forgets how to function without fervor, because when something you’ve wanted was already in your hands, you have to adjust and cup your fingers so it can no longer fall.

He cannot let Sasuke fall out again.

So he rather take the hit. “Uh, what say you?" 

Sasuke’s actions speak faster than his words, impact bursting through before you know it comes. But somehow, he lags, which is weird because it’s Naruto, Naruto always stir something, some reaction, some off handed unbitten reaction, from him. Those stolen moments emblazoned themselves into his memories. 

It takes a painstaking moment labored out of Naruto before he replies, “Are you sure?”

Naruto exhales a nervous laugh. “Trust me, I wouldn’t still be standing here if I wasn’t.” Running away is tiring, too tiring, too much. Brick by brick, he will amass to standing without qualms of any chasing or pursuit anymore.

Twilight almost breaks, and his heart almost fractures. Sasuke starts walking, away, and he’s just standing there unable to think until—

He steps forward, hurrying to catch in step with him.

“Maybe we do need to work on your communication skills,” Naruto grins, chest heaving. “’Cos you confuse a lotta people, y’know.” 

“It’s not my fault you can’t follow,” says Sasuke. “Idiots like you have big mouths with even bigger words falling through until you can’t keep hold of them.”

Riptide clashes onto Naruto, when the sun washes away into the clouds and leaves a terrain of light on Sasuke. He thinks _shit, I didn’t pack_ , and his hands are unclasped but—

But he loses nothing. Maybe everything. Or something, if he reaches out. 

Or worse: losing nothing and gaining nothing if he doesn’t.

The pull was magnetic, yet soft, not like he remembered. The pull between them was always violent in nature; instead of things making sense, they were beating sense into each other, but this time the only beat Naruto can hear echoes from his heart. He knows Sasuke’s hands were calloused and pale; sharpened, by Konoha even, in the night where the world was painted red. Naruto was sure he was born out of red too; but the colour subdues, leaving orange behind.

He doesn’t push. He lets the waves roll, when his left hand reaches for Sasuke’s right.

Naruto looks up, as if the magnetic pull were an electric shock (maybe Sasuke was pulling a fire jutsu gag on him, maybe that’s why he feels this, a soft pull that somehow expends from electricity or something), jolting to see if Sasuke reacted. As he tilts his head, he meets his eyes, and thinks _oh_. 

Naruto was going to call bullshit. Naruto was going to call bullshit on the twilight light softening Sasuke’s face and pulling even softer shit with his gaze. Naruto was going to call bullshit because Sasuke was looking at him and smiling, a genuine one, the one that turns up and tightens a lock in his chest stronger than if his clones ganged up on him and pierced a thousand ransengan.

Naruto was going to call bullshit: and he does.

“What’s wrong with your face?”

There it was, another other lag in action. Naruto doesn’t know what to think; if his best friend was secretly undercover as a person but was actually an automation, or truly if Sasuke intentionally suspends his actions, leaving Naruto hanging on every bit of it. The mere speculation irks him.

Maybe it was the trick of the sun, or some hair strands strayed to Naruto’s eyes, that the light graces Sasuke’s face in not a smoldering way, not the way where he would look down from above on a higher cliff, or a higher branch of a tree, but this way; the way it tingles and reverberates in Naruto. How such a small smile, maybe even a trick of light, could pack a punch stronger than the wind that carries their ebbing aggression. 

Sasuke fucking Uchiha smiles again; and Naruto catches it too, the giddy pathogens that attacks his body and immolate him, that _cure_ him.

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” says Sasuke, and conveniently so, the breeze pirouettes with his bangs, unfurling. It’s like the breeze captures the past, a begging to be called, whispering, _this is it_. “I’m pulling teeth by not succumbing to kicking your face right now.”

After footfalls and blood and tears, Naruto finally learns the world doesn’t wait to give and take. It just does.

So with a step, patience became a vice and virtue, because in front of him was the unfathomable fog of his dreams now clearing, melting away from uncertainty and ambiguity and it just was, Sasuke and him, he and Sasuke, Sasuke looking at him with a different sense of fondness, not the parental one Iruka dotes on him, not the platonic one his friends (how far he’s come, to have them) regard him with.

He walks, starting, “How saintly of you. As if you’d get that far with my face anyway.”

Sasuke turns to him, in almost a bewildered look. Or scoff. Or—forget it. It was subtle, but something was there. He was here, corporeal and unflinching. He even retorts, “I thought our battle established how we’re both equals, or were you just saying that as a pissoff to end the fight?” 

“Haha.” 

Sasuke’s smile split to a more evident one now, undeniably uncontrollable. “’Even I’m torn to shreds, I’ll bring Sasuke back—‘”

“—Hey, _hey_ , where the hell did you hear that! I never even brought that up—”

Sasuke’s expression flattens, almost to a one-eighty. Naruto prods, “Who’s the little birdie? I know I mentioned it to—to—”

“—Birdie?—”

“Ah yeah,” Naruto forms a fist and knocks it to his forehead. “Birdie is code for dickhead. How’d Sai bring it up?”

The light nearly fades, the horizon barely slugging itself along the clouds, uplifted by the wind. It was the apex of timidness from the sky when Sasuke asks, “Do you regret it?”

“Regret—”

“Saying that.”

Naruto really chose to be with this man, abysmal social cues and all that. “No. I don’t think I ever will. Won’t take it back, even if stuff had to come down way worst.”

Sasuke stares at him. Naruto feels the expanse of silence, electricity whiplashing through them dwindling. He coughs, “You’d probably say the same thing.”

“Say what?” 

“’I’ve lost’. And I would still be ticked that you thought you’re a loser or something ‘cos you’re not, you know.”

Birds caw in a distance, and the trees whistle. Naruto thinks, this is theirs. The immortalized moment. Naruto nudges Sasuke; an old, lodged muscle memory from years ago, but when Sasuke looks at him it’s alright. “Did I hit a nerve?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? Damn, I didn’t think mentioning that would be that—”

“No, I mean, “ Sasuke inhales, swiftly, then exhales before continuing. “yeah, I’ve lost. And for the first time in my life, it’s not loss in mourning or—or anger. It’s still there, I don’t think I can simply forgive and forget, but I’ve lost.” 

Naruto locks his gaze onto Sasuke’s, the world hardly brushing at the side as everything pulls away, leaving them. Not behind, but suspended; time to take things in, to process and fumble and grow. He understands what Sasuke meant, only prior to what they’ve lost and gain through the years; losing meant to render from fighting against _this_ , this bond. This relationship. This actuality.

Naruto melts into a shit-eating grin. Pushing his left arm, it wades towards Sasuke’s right. Slowly, he bumps his forehead against his; he heard the other’s breath hitch, and perhaps his too, but his insides were too jostled and his heart was thudding too hard it might tug up his throat and spill all over. He tightens his grip on Sasuke’s; and Sasuke does too, not in a challenge, but maybe—maybe yearn, too.

For once, they were suspended; no one moving too fast to chase after, no one moving too slow to catch up to, but soaking in each other’s pace, letting the waves of heat and breeze wash them away.  

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so goddamn tired of ABO mpreg non-con divorce fics so here's a quite a botched attempt at fixing chapter 699, which, events in this are vaguely researched in the wiki; just because. anyway, the title is from moira dela torre's "before it sinks in"; it's generally the overtone of this fic. & thank you for reading!!! it was fun and cute and not too serious to write; also it's been sitting in my drafts for months. kudos if u Know naruto ended at ch 688/699 <3


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